The Other World Game

They’re annoying because their team wins ALL THE TIME. But I chose the country I was born in. Partly out of rebellion against my Kiwi mother (hold your psychoanalysis of my mother issues). She’s ALWAYS banging on about how good New Zealand is at everything from rugby to making ice cream. But it’s mostly because I’m Australian, and I’m patriotic.

That makes it very satisfying when the Wallabies beat the All Blacks like they did in the Tri Nations this year. The All Blacks are the best team in the world and that’s unlikely to change… ever. Everyone in New Zealand wants to be an All Black, even the women. In Australia three quarters of the rugby talent is absorbed by rugby’s rock n roll wrestling equivalent rugby league, so we’ll never really know how good the Wallabies could be. But it’s all academic because league’s not going anywhere. All things considered the Wallabies punch well above their weight.

While unpredictability is usually a good thing for a rugby team the Wallabies brand of unpredictability is very bad. They win just enough to give their fans hope that we are entering another decade of world dominance (like most of the 90s). It doesn’t take much to give Australian fans a false sense of invincibility. But it’s just as easy to shatter that illusion by doing something silly like losing to Ireland. This not only hugely upset’s their fans but it diminishes the number of Australia’s who admit to caring about rugby, instead they concentrate on one of the three more popular football codes on offer or Cricket.

I don’t want to take anything away from Ireland. They played a cracker of a game. They had obviously been watching replays of Australia’s loss to Samoa in July and the Queensland Reds loss to the Brumbies during the super rugby season. The Reds are the team that dominate how the Wallabies play. But even still, Australia should NOT have lost to them.

So now it’s even more unlikely that the Wallabies will make it through to the final. But even as I say that I have a secret, however misguided belief that they will win this World Cup because they certainly still can.